Losing Charlie Merritt: A Keystone Stater Remembers the Meuse-Argonne
I nforming families back home of the loss of a loved one during the Great War proved a tough job for a multitude of reasons, one of them being that oftentimes the soldiers themselves didn't quite know what happened to their comrades. First Sergeant Ellis F. Robinson, of Co. M, 112 th Infantry, 28 th Division explained this in a letter written home after hostilities ended. " Lots of fellows were killed and maybe only one or two men witnessed the loss, and the witnesses were later knocked off," he wrote. "So we have no record. There are many cases like this. I have written a sheaf of letters back to the States in answer to some inquiry from some mother, father, sister, or brother as to the circumstances of their boy’s death or injury. The people back home don’t realize how hard it is. For we know so little about so many of the cases for we were continually advancing through dense woods and you might be able to see only a few men near you when maybe a whole batt
